As the technology develops creating newer types of data, and there are more ways to capture these, the amount of data is also increasing. Relating the related data is becoming more and more challenging, and it is clear that the value of data can increase significantly if it is correlated with more information.
The advent and subsequent rapid evolution in the communications and data capture capabilities of small computers and mobile communication devices has reached a level of functional integration that is catalysing an entirely novel range of usage possibilities which revolve around the remote collection and transmission of recorded multimedia and other relatively large format data objects.
Currently available portable devices inexpensively combine video and still image capture, voice recording, data communications and even location acquisition technologies into a “shirt pocket” physical footprint, and the enabling wireless communications networks and supporting services have been built out to the point of effective near-ubiquity in many parts of the world. While portable devices have increasingly advanced data capture peripherals integrated, their user input/output interfaces have not kept pace, and are of necessity confined and ergonomically challenging.
The very small physical dimensions of the devices themselves have led to a nascent operational barrier to the widespread leveraging of these devices toward the creation and manipulation of usefully annotated data objects from the field, namely that the user semantics and control sequences of the prevalent Windows, Icons, Menu, and Pointing Device paradigm which characterise much human-computer interaction often do not translate well to the small format, limited resolution readouts and miniature input devices of a portable unit.
For example, transmitting even a single still image to a correspondent over electronic mail typically requires that the operator invoke a chain of user interface interactions; framing and executing the capture using the imaging software, accessing the email client application, therein originating and addressing an email message, referencing and attaching the image object to the message, and sending the resulting compound over the network. Should positional, descriptive or other information be desired as an annotation, a further chain of interactions with any number of other pertinent user interfaces would be needed. While such elaborate control sequences are arguably manageable within the relatively comfortable ergonomics of desktop workstation or other well appointed system's control and data input hardware, they can be quite time consuming, awkward and error-prone in a handheld or other constrained environment. Transmitting multiples images is even more involved than transmitting a single image.
Accordingly, there is a need for a fast and simple to use operator interface for mobile small computers and communication devices, which can allow association and manipulation of complex data for transmission, while minimising the degree of direct operator data entry and control interactions.